Semipalatinsk Test Site happens to be one of the largest in the world and the largest one on the territory of the former Soviet Union, and, generated by hundreds of nuclear tests, it raised issues which require solutions. I will try to cover only a few facets of the problem
First of all, I would like to reveal a fundamental contradiction in the very functioning of this test site: its usage in the arms race by the totalitarian Soviet regime without considering the security issues lead to a humanitarian disaster which took lives and health of hundreds of thousands of people.
Secondly, I will try to realize how and why social activity rose in the former Soviet Union which later lead to closure of the test site – for the first time in the world history.
1. Test Site Functioning: military-political and humanitarian aspects
When talking about the creation and operation of Semipalatinsk Test Site, we can envisage the problem from several angles.
From the military-political point of view, Semipalatinsk test site was part of the Soviet nuclear program. Semipalatinsk Test Site was not the only one in the USSR (as nuclear tests were also carried out on such test sites and in Totskoye, Sary-Shagan and New Land), however, it hosted over 70% of all the nuclear tests, among which were some of the most important ones. I think it could have several reasons, as far as it is possible to understand while studying this phenomenon.
First, a convenient location of the site: the topography allowed carrying out underground explosions both in shafts and in wells.
Second, the main scientific base – equipment, laboratory, watch centers etc. – was concentrated on this site and in specifically created «secret» town near it named after the example of oth...
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...vernment had not kept its promise to reduce the number and the power of explosions and claimed that the «people's maratorium» had begun, which meant that any new test would cause a total strike in Kazakhstan.
The government had no choice but to freeze the tests, and further breakdown of the USSR, default in Moscow in August 1991 and the actual crash of the country moved N.A.Nazarbayev, who by then had been the President of Kazakh SSR, to make the following crucial step: to sign a decree on August 29, 1991 closing the test site.
Between 1991 andпо 1992, within the framework of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program suggested by the USA, Kazakhstan received assistance in eliminating threat of radioactive materials getting from the landfill into the hands terrorists. However, the main humanitarian consequences of four decades of nuclear tests is still felt today.
... and a special exhibit on the Internal Workings of the Soviet System. This site provides an accurate representation of the Soviet System during the Cold War as seen by the actual Soviet documents. Also, this site gives detailed information of pivitol moments during the Cold War era, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis.
What the society Josef Stalin had made was in Soviet Russia in the U.S.S.R. What came to be the U.S.S.R. Stalin had learned from the Bolshevik
...nto the events surround Rocky Flats as well as the status of current nuclear operations.
The first two cities to build plutonium were Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia. To explain how these two cities came about and how it all ended, she divided the book into four parts. The first half of the book brought the readers in two journeys on how the first two cities started; it created a competition between two nations on who can develop better weapons. The first part was called “Incarcerated Space on the Western Nuclear Frontier,” it explains how the plutonium camp started in Richland, Washington. The camp had tight security, “Hanford Camp was cut off from the surrounding area with a system of fences and gatehouse…Workers on one site were restricted from entering other construction sites in order to limit their knowledge of the entirety of the secret project” (Brown 22). The secrecy of the camps was so important because the government did not want their war enemies to know what they were doing. The second part of was called “The Soviet Working Class Atom,” it also talked about how the Russian camp started and how it was also a secret because of the enemies. The camp started because Stalin wanted build something bigger and better than what the United States was building. During this time, the arms race started to progress because of the
At 7:32 p.m. December 25, 1991, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin in Moscow for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag, which symbolized the disintegration of Soviet Union. Early in the day, the last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, resigned his post, and Boris Yeltsin became the president of the newly independent Russian state. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the campaign between the Soviet Union and the United States ended. Nonetheless, although the end of the Cold War makes people around the world enter a peaceful time, until now both people in the past and historians are amazed why the previous powerful Soviet Union collapsed suddenly. Thereby, the cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union is still an everlasting and popular topic in the world.
Stalin, political bureaucrats, and even leading Soviet physicists of the time often put early pre-war and wartime Soviet nuclear research on the back burner. This was mainly due to the Soviet Union fighting for its very existence during the first years of the war. After the tide of the war had turned towards the Soviets, and intelligence from the Western powers suggested an active atomic weapon program, renewed interest by Stalin and the Soviet machine began in earnest. The Soviet Union was behind the technological curve when it implemented its atomic weapons program in earnest and suffered greatly from a lack of resources. The Soviet scientific community, by itself, could not have produced a working atomic weapon in just four short years after the successful deployment of two atomic bombs by the United States over Japan in 1945. Resources, material, research, and scientists taken or stripped from Soviet occupied areas of the defeated Nazi Reich (mostly German) and designs stolen from the American Manhattan Project used for the Soviet nuclear weapons program allowed that program to become successful.
...ad a grudge from the Cold War. More importantly, the absence of a containment structure is especially important. As pointed out by Rhodes article about Chernobyl, "Post-accident analyses indicate that if there had been U.S.-style containment, none of the radioactivity would have escaped, and there would have been no injuries or deaths" (Rhodes "Chernobyl", PBS). Chernobyl wouldn’t have been the traumatic event that it was if the Soviets were technologically advanced and obviously, if they trained their personnel that managed radioactive materials. In the end the stubbornness of the Soviets was an important aspect of Chernobyl as it stopped them from asking for help and the prevailing operating philosophy at the time in the Soviet Union, which did not trust automation and relied on operators who did not understand the process turned out bring about this upheaval.
“His plans were in 5 year intervals in which the government took control over all businesses and industries, focused mainly on factory output/transportation and to implement quota systems” (Greatneck). “The Soviet Union needed to become a top tier area in the global market, but their insufficient funds were what stopped from becoming types of governments such as communist, socialist and capitalist” (StudentPulse). Banks ceased to bail out industrial enterprises. The civilian administrative system, which was already creaking under wartime strains, started to collapse.
...these tests ensured a long, relative peace between the U.S. and Soviet Bloc and greatly benefited the scientific community.
producing a earthquake safe environment. In a nuclear facility that in itself is a danger, an honest
on of this bomb was to teach the Soviet Union about the effects of nuclear bombs.
As I examined the Cold War, interesting stories and facts appeared that fascinate our minds with wonders about what it was like back then. But, by pulling out three main points, I was able to understand the basics of the Cold War and get an insight into what really happened and how it affects the world that we live in today.
Chernobyl was the greatest nuclear disaster of the 20th century. On April 26th, 1986, one of four nuclear reactors located in the Soviet Union melted down and contaminated a vast area of Eastern Europe. The meltdown, a result of human error, lapsed safety precautions, and lack of a containment vessel, was barely contained by dropping sand and releasing huge amounts of deadly radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere. The resulting contamination killed or injured hundreds of thousands of people and devastated the environment. The affects of this accident are still being felt today and will be felt for generations to come.
From the creation of nuclear weapons at the start of the Cold War to today, the world has experienced struggles fueled by the want of nuclear power. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Iran’s nuclear weapon program are some of the most important conflicts over nuclear weapons. Thanks to the use of nuclear weapons in 1945 to end World War II, the world has come extremely close to a nuclear war, and more countries have began developing nuclear power. Unmistakably, many conflicts since the start of the Cold War have been caused by nuclear weapons, and there are many more to come.